The Palestinian Authority is telling its people that peace with Israel is not a goal. Instead, the PA says that all of Israel is "Palestine," and that no compromise is acceptable because this principle is "the only red line." This message was expressed by the regular cartoonist, Muhammad Sabaaneh, in the official PA daily.

Published this week, his cartoon displayed a map of all of Israel (excluding the Golan Heights) and the PA areas, with the following text written across the map:

"The only red line"

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The cartoon is a clear example of the PA's lack of recognition of Israel's right to exist, and sends a message that the PA's real goal is a complete dismantling of Israel and its replacement by a Palestinian state. This sentiment is implicit in PA ideology but only occasionally is it expressed so explicitly in its controlled media.

The following are examples of recent PA events presenting all of Israel as "Palestine":

Fatah event broadcast on PA TV, held in the presence of Mahmoud Abbas and many other senior PA officials:

"We commit and promise to stand behind you, oh Mahmoud Abbas, until Judgment Day. I am returning to you, the purest land, oh land of the free. No matter how long the nights of exile, I am returning to you, oh land. From Rafah to Rosh Hanikra (northern Israel) our coast, and Beit Shean (Israeli city). Above your soil, oh my land, is a picture of Garden of Eden. From Rafah to Rosh Hanikra our coast, and Beit Shean. Above your soil, oh my land, is a picture of Garden of Eden. From Rafah to Rosh Hanikra, north and south, are the picture's borders. From Haifa (Israeli city) and Tantura to the [Jordan] valley (i.e., all of Israel). I am returning to you, the purest land, oh land of the free."

"Jaffa, Acre, Haifa, and Nazareth are ours. [I] Muhammad sing about the Galilee and the Golan (Heights). Jaffa, Acre, Haifa and Nazareth are ours. [I] Kabha sing about the Galilee and the Golan (Heights). From Bethlehem to Jenin is Palestinian, Ramle, Lod and Sakhnin are Palestinian. Nowhere is more beautiful than Jerusalem; no matter how much we travel From Safed to Al-Badhan (near Nablus) is Palestinian; Tiberias and Ashkelon are Palestinian."

Song and dance broadcast on PA TV, with lyrics depicting all of Israel as part of "my country Palestine":

"Oh flying bird, circling around,by Allah, oh traveling [bird], I burn with envy.My country Palestine is beautiful.Turn to Safed, and then to Tiberias,and send regards to the sea of Acre and Haifa.Don't forget Nazareth - the Arab fortress,and tell Beit Shean about its people's return.Oh flying bird, circling around...by Allah, oh traveling [bird], I burn with envy.My country Palestine is beautiful....Go to Jenin and bring me from its valleygreetings to Nablus, Tulkarem and their soil.Drink the water of Jaffa's port,don't forget Ramle and Ramallah.Oh flying bird, circling around...by Allah, oh traveling [bird], I burn with envy.My country Palestine is beautiful."

In addition, the PA continues to deny Israel's right to exist, calling all of Israel "an occupation," "stolen" and more.

The following are examples of the PA calling Israel "an occupation":

Official PA daily calls: Israel "Palestine occupied in 1948":

Headline: "Under the auspices of the Prime Minister [Abbas] and with an unprecedented official and popular turnout - commencement of the third Summer Nights in Jerusalem Festival in Beit Anan"

"Husam Al-Sheikh, Chairman of the Cultural Forum Center in Beit Anan, which is organizing the festival, estimated that since its commencement two years ago, the festival has immortalized cultural and geographical [Palestinian] diversity in its events, and that this year this diversity will be highlighted through the hosting of artists and groups from all the Palestinian districts as well as from Palestine occupied in 1948 (i.e., Israel)."

[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 16, 2011]

Official PA daily calls Israel "the territories occupied in 1948":

"Under the slogan, 'Palestine is closer: Lod shall remain', the 'Khutwa' youth group, in cooperation with a group of Palestinian youth from the West Bank and from the territories occupied in 1948 (i.e., Israel), held a charity performance to support the resolve of our people in the occupied Palestinian city of Lod...

Manal Taha, one of the organizers of the event... [said that Israel's aim is] to threaten the resolve within the occupying entity, which continues through the actions of the authorities in Jaffa, Acre, Haifa, Jerusalem, and other occupied Palestinian cities. She added, 'Through this event we hope to turn the spotlight onto the suffering of our people in the Interior (i.e., in Israel). In addition, we aim for this event to be a first step on the road to restoring the spiritual connection between Palestinians wherever they may be, by carrying out other activities in the future for these purposes. Taha called upon everyone to participate in this activity, whose aim is to energize the connection between the Palestinians of the territories occupied in 1948 and [those in] the territories occupied in 1967."

[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, June 23, 2011]

Official PA daily states that Israel - "the territories occupied in 1948" - is "currently under the rule of the occupation":

"If you climb the Khirbat Safa Hills [in the West Bank] and look with your eyes towards what the Israeli occupation and its settlers have seized, your eyes will well up and cause you to weep twice: once over the territories occupied in 1948 (i.e., year of Israel's creation), which are currently under the rule of the occupation. The Safa Hills look out over wide expanses of these territories, and sometimes you can see the Mediterranean Sea, the city of Ashkelon (i.e., Israeli city), and even Tal Al-Rabi'a "Tel Aviv", upon which the occupation has consolidated its control."

[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 31, 2011]

The following are examples of the PA calling Israel "stolen":

In a 12th-Grade schoolbook published by the PA Ministry of Education, and in use today:

"Palestine's war ended with a catastrophe that is unprecedented in history, when the Zionist gangs stole Palestine and expelled its people from their cities, their villages, their lands and their houses, and established the State of Israel."

Narrator in PA TV broadcast addresses Israelis, asking them to leave, because Israel has no right to exist:

"Where are you [Israelis] from? Where are you from? Where are you from? Of course, you're from Ukraine; of course, you're from Germany, from Poland, from Russia, from Ethiopia, the Falasha (pejorative for Ethiopian Jews). Why have you stolen my homeland and taken my place? Please, I ask of you, return to your original homeland, so that I can return to my original homeland. This is my homeland; go back to your homeland!"

RP

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At least four airstrikes hit Gaza early Tuesday, leaving two people critically wounded and a third on life support, Palestinian medical and security sources said.

All three injuries occurred in a strike east of Gaza City, where a group of Palestinian militants had gathered, the sources said. The other strikes targeted a training field for the military wing of Hamas, the Palestinian faction that controls Gaza, east of the city, and a site outside Khan Younis that militants recently used to fire rockets out of the territory into Israel, the security sources said.

A fourth strike hit near the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, but no details were immediately known.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the strikes, which occurred shortly after 2 a.m. (8 p.m. Monday ET).

The IDF will not tolerate any attempt to harm Israeli civilians and IDF soldiers, and will respond with determination to any attempt to use terror against the State of Israel. The IDF holds the Hamas terrorist organization solely responsible for any terrorist activity emanating from the Gaza Strip.

A shocking tale about UNWRA’s involvement in the cognitive war against Israel.

There is no shortage of claims about alleged Israeli human rights violations in the so called ’West Bank’. Most of these claims originate from Palestinian sources and NGO’s and are part of a disinformation campaign that aims to delegitimize Israel. This campaign of distortions, bias and, sometimes, outright lies is well documented by a host of bloggers and organizations – such as Honest Reporting and Camera.

One of the players in this campaign is UNWRA, an organization that is supposed to be impartial and to provide humanitarian aid to Palestinian refugees. UNWRA’s anti-Israel biasis not quite new but, until recently, has been limited to refugee related issues. Now UNWRA has apparently decided to interfere in the already explosive situation in the West Bank and joined the general disinformation campaign against Israel. Here’s how that campaign works.

Dutch orchestra attacked by IDF?

At the end of July the Palestinian News Networkpublished an articleabout a Dutch orchestra that was supposedly attacked by the IDF during aperformancein the Palestinian village Kfar Qadum. The PNN article was widely distributed among international media outlets. However, a member of the orchestrawrote a detailed accountabout the actual events. The orchestra participated in the weeklypeacefuldemonstration against an IDF checkpoint in the vicinity of the village, hesaid.

According to another account on thePalsolidarity websitea group of Palestinians approached the soldiers who responded by firing teargas grenades. The IDF, in response to our request for more information, said that the missing piece in the accounts was that the Palestiniansstarted throwing stonesat the soldiers

So there was no performance and no peaceful demonstration.

Olive trees destroyed by IDF?

Another claim that originated from a Palestinian source, involved the alleged destruction of 200 olive trees in the village Al Walaja near Bethlehem. JAI, the Joint Advocacy Initiative,published a reportabout Na’el Khalid, a Palestinian farmer who claimed that 200 olive trees were destroyed when Israeli authorities started building the security fence on part of his land.

JAI also reported that Khalid would lose his land to Givat Ya’el – aplannedJewish community adjacent to Al Walaja.

We asked the IDF to comment on this report and received the following answer:

“In accordance with Israeli Supreme Court rulings regarding the rerouting of Israel’s security fence, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) transplanted trees from Mr. Na’el Khalil’s property to an adjacent plot, ensuring that he was able to continue working his land.

The Israeli court authorities have previously denied several petitions seeking ownership of the land adjacent to the Palestinian village Al-Walajah by the Givat Ya’el community, a private building project in Judea”.

A field investigation in Al Walaja where we visited Na’el Whalid’s lands, proved the IDF right.

The photo [above]was taken on August 9thand shows some of the Dutch funded olive trees on a plot adjacent to the fence which is still under construction.

Al Ahram and The Economist

Then there was anEconomist articlethat was apparently based on a B’Tselem report and an article on the972 website. According to the Economist, Israel routinely arrests Palestinian minors at night, some as young as eleven, and shows no mercy when they stand trial.

The Economist also quoted Israeli Eran Segal from Halamish saying that

“Israeli soldiers don’t maim enough Palestinians”.

Asked to comment, Segal denied he ever said a thing like that. In fact he had told The Economist:

“If the IDF would have taken the incidents more seriously and had acted in a different way the stone throwing would have been a thing of the past”.

The Egyptian paper Al Ahramoutdidthe Economist when it charged ‘Israel’s most aggressively racist government ever’with‘prosecuting and imprisoning Palestinian children at will on bogus charges such as throwing stones’.

In a reaction, the Israeli Military Prosecutor’s Office stated that stone throwing is a criminal offense in Israel. Throwing stones can cause severe injuries and even – as hashappened in the past– death.

Israeli law calls for the punishment of stone throwers, even if they are minors and regardless of their nationality or religion. However contrary to what was written in the Economist’s article, there are almost no cases where Palestinian minors under the age of 14 have been convicted for stone throwing.

The Military Prosecutor’s Office also stressed that a special court for minors has been established (Military Juvenile Court) which is meant to take care of the defense of the rights of minors.

In addition, almost all suspects in the Juvenile Court are represented by counsel, which is contrary to the state of affairs in Israeli civil courts. Most of the trials take place within a rather short amount of time and minors, whose case has not been heard in a reasonable amount of time, are often released.

The IDF tries to arrest the suspect as soon as possible after an incident has taken place. If this proves impossible the military, for security reasons only, carries out arrests during night time. Minors are held in special wings of three prisons and their needs are met on an individual, case by case, basis. So there is no prosecution and Imprisoning without due process but, rather, a legal procedure that takes in account the age of the suspect.

Reacting to this interview, and a relatedUNWRA press release, we asked Gunness for additional data and information on demolitions issues.

UNWRA then sent us a report that only contained locations and dates of the West Bank demolitions.

When asked for additional information about the demolitions, such as court orders, Gunnes became extremely agitated, used crude language and demanded immediate publication of ‘the facts’. Facts? Let’s examine this claim in the Ma’an interview:

“Many displacements are taking place where settlements are expanding and with it we are seeing an upturn in vicious attacks by Jewish settlers. Palestinians are being thrown off their ancestral lands to make way for settlers”,Gunness told Ma’an.

This suggests two things. First, that settlements are still expanding outside the municipal boundaries and second that Jews are replacing Palestinian Arabs. As Gunness knows very well, since 2005 settlement expansion has only taken place within the existing zoning lines of the municipal boundaries. No Palestinian Arabs have been kicked off their land to be replaced by Jews.

In fact Gunness was referring here to Bedouins who are illegally camping. A COGAT official told us that the Bedouin increasingly tend to camp in the vicinity of settlements and are often paid to do so by pro-Palestinian NGO’s. In the same Ma’an interview Gunness claimed the following:

“There is growing evidence that it (demolitions in Area C of the West Bank) is destroying the very fabric of these communities and ultimately contributing to a demographic shift which is changing the ethnic make-up of the West Bank.”

This suggests a slow “ethnic cleansing” of the Palestinian population on the West Bank. Of course Gunness is well aware of the fact that only 3% of the Palestinian population lives in Area C – most of them Bedouins, who mostly live in tents and are used to moving from place to place. UNWRA’s own census from 2007 shows an average population growth of the Palestinian population on the West Bank of 2,5 % per year.

But there was more. In an e-mail to Missing Peace Gunness wrote the following:

“127 people expelled in maale nikhmas – displaced for settlement in the last few weeks. Is that enough?

Really? The 127 Palestiniansexpelledfrom MaalehMichmas ‘displacedfor settlement’were in fact Bedouins whodecided to leave, as his own UNWRA press release states. There is no evidence that Ma’aleh Michmas residents took their place.

In fact, according to a report by the pro-Palestinian organizationInternational Solidarity Movement, 16 Bedouin were evicted in the Maaleh Michnas area at the end of July. This happened after they illegally camped within a closed military zone and received eviction orders two years ago.

UNWRA’s mandate

This was not the first time Gunness was caught distorting the facts and engaging in an anti-Israel campaign. During the Gaza war he falselyaccusedIsrael of firing at UNWRA convoys.

The new shocking aspect in this affair is that UNWRA now clearly interferes in politics and oversteps its current mandate, as defined by the UN:

UNRWA’s contemporary mandate is to provide relief, human development and protection services to Palestine refugees and persons displaced by the 1967 hostilities in its fields of operation: Jordan, Lebanon, the Syrian Arab Republic, West Bank and the Gaza Strip. UNRWA’s mandate has been repeatedly renewed by the UN General Assembly. The current mandate runs till 30 June 2014.

What do the UNWRA investigations into West Bank building issues and violence between Jews and Arabs have to do with providing humanitarian services to displaced persons.

Gunness told us that UNWRA has a team of 12 investigators conducting research on settlement and building issues on a daily base. Got that? A UN organization designed to provide humanitarian aid to Palestinian refugees is going after Israel’s building policies on the West Bank.

Instead of focusing on the plight of the refugees and their descendants in, for example, Lebanon, where the Palestinians living in refugee camps still are without basic human rights, UNWRA prefers to join the disinformation campaign against Israel.

Too late

It may be too late for Israel to repair the damage caused by this global disinformation campaign. That’s too bad because this is where many other campaigns like BDS, and delegitimization start.

The Israeli government does not seem to grasp the severity of the situation and still doesn’t respond decisively to the endless flurry of distortions and outright false claims. However, it is not too late to demand an immediate investigation into UNWRA’s participation in this cognitive war against the Jewish state.

This affair, on top of earlier scandals in which UNRWA’s ties to Hamaswere exposed, should finally lead to a complete overhaul of the way the UN deals with the Arab Israeli conflict.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, whose role in the fight against South African apartheid in the 1980s gained him the Nobel Peace Prize and global fame, is among the world’s most respected figures.

Barack Obama awarded him the US highest honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Tutu has been called “an inspiration" and was compared to Albert Schweitzer and Gandhi. The Wall Street Journal labeled him “the best known priest in the world.” Tutu was even asked to donate his genome to scientists to discover the African roots of mankind.

With Nelson Mandela in jail, it fell to Tutu to steer the struggle against institutionalized racial oppression in a nonviolent direction. From his church in segregated Soweto, Tutu urged the imposition of economic sanctions against the white government. Since then, Tutu’s face has become the symbol of tolerance and goodness.

However, the Archbishop’s iconic voice has also found another cause no less popular: The global campaign against Israel and the Jewish people. Tutu just promoted an appeal to the US pension fund of the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association for cutting the partnership with Israeli companies. He also helped the Australian Marrickville Council approve a boycott of Israel's goods.

Recently, Tutu convinced the University of Johannesburg to end its relationship with Ben-Gurion University as part of a boycott against Israeli academic institutions, resembling the dark time when German universities banned famous Jewish intellectuals such as T.W. Adorno and Albert Einstein. Archbishop Tutu also promoted the boycott of all Israeli goods by the US Food Co-Cop and he became the poster leader of the Western NGOs promoting campaigns for divestment and sanctions against the Jewish State.

Last week, the Archbishop sponsored a call for an arms embargo against Israel. Next November, Tutu will open in Cape Town the third session of the anti-Israeli Russell Tribunal, a standing organization that held two tribunals against Israel last year in Barcelona and London. During this event, Tutu will seek to determine whether Israel’s policies fit the international legal definition of the crime of “apartheid."

Tutu has ideologically built this conceptual mousetrap of “Zionist apartheid," where the Jewish question is the cheese and the victim. The Archbishop perfectly knows that charging Israel with apartheid is simply a blood libel, as Arabs and Jews live and work together in Israel, while sharing all public facilities (hospitals, schools, malls, buses, cinemas, parks.)

'Forgive the Nazis'

Making apartheid accusations against a state that undertook major operations to save black Jews in Africa is ludicrous. But the Christian Archbishop is not interested in preaching the truth, but rather, in promoting the liquidation of Israel, creating a new, horrible Jewish Diaspora. On university campuses worldwide, in the mainstream media and in large parts of Western public opinion, Tutu’s analogy is a very popular cause and “Zionist apartheid” is already the new codeword for racist evil.

Thanks to Tutu, the World Conference against Racism, held by the United Nations in Durban in 2001, was transformed into a racist conference against Israel. In the same city where President Mbeki held his festival of victory against apartheid, another death sentence for the Jews was being pronounced under Tutu’s umbrella and that of the United Nations.

Tutu has demonized the “Jewish lobby” as too “powerful” and “scary," resorting to a vile myth rooted in anti-Jewish stereotype, whereby the Jews control Washington. According to Tutu’s horrific and false accusation against the Jewish people, Israel is a sadistically colonialist entity, a blind persecutor of children, and a mad builder of apartheid walls.

Tutu proclaimed, many years before Iran’s Ahmadinejad, that the West had muted criticism of Israel because of guilt over the Holocaust. He has accused Israel of acting in an “un-Christian” way. He has complained of “the Jewish monopoly of the Holocaust” and has demanded that its victims must “forgive the Nazis for the Holocaust,” while refusing to forgive the “Jewish people” for “persecuting others.”

Tutu has asserted that Zionism has “very many parallels with racism.” He has compared Israel to Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union, saying that they too were once “very powerful” but they “bit the dust,” as will “unjust” Israel. Tutu has claimed that the Christian God sides with the Palestinians, whom he compares to the Israelites under slavery in Egypt.

Tutu is also responsible for the “apartheid wall” mythology that has been one of the most repugnant propagandistic manipulations that Israel has ever suffered, because it is based on ignoring of the cause-effect nexus. All decent people know that Israel is not Soweto. But Tutu resembles those Christian bishops who fomented the Final Solution by the idea that the wandering Jew is the symbol of God's rejection of the Jewish people.

Tutu's cassock masks a long, hateful history of ugly intolerance toward the Jewish people and Israel. Under a new guise, the Nazi appeal “Kauft nicht bei Juden…” (Don't buy from Jews) is back.

Giulio Meotti, a journalist with Il Foglio, is the author of the book A New Shoah: The Untold Story of Israel's Victims of Terrorism